NASA this weekend all but abandoned a money-saving technology due to a lack of money. You read that correctly. The space agency’s budget woes are so suffocating that it can’t even get the funding to develop ways to make missions more efficient. In this case, the efficiency would have been massive: the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope […]
After narrowly avoiding the chopping block
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NASA isn’t immune to software glitches that can cause some of its incredibly expensive hardware to stop functioning. Such was the case about a week ago when a software update caused a fault on the Curiosity Mars rover, leaving it immobile for almost a week. NASA has announced today that Curiosity is rolling again on its way to the base of the 3.4-mile tall Martian mountain that’s its goal by next spring.
NASA officials say that Curiosity begin moving again early Thursday morning leaving the rocky outcrop called Cooperstown where its been parked during its cross-country trek. Mount Sharp is the ultimate goal destination for Curiosity and is in the middle of Gail Crater.
Curiosity went into safe mode on November 7 after the machine’s internal computer froze while ground controllers were attempting to switch to new upgraded software. There was some sort of discrepancy between a data file and catalog file inside the rover’s computer. Reports indicate that when running on the new R11 software, Curiosity’s catalog file showed data was still written to the computer memory. The computer inside the rover was unable to access that data because the older R10 software handles data differently than the upgraded R11 software. Curiosity was eventually reset and is using the older R10 software while engineers update to R11. It’s just like a Windows update.
“Unfortunately, the handover didn’t work well,” Jim Erickson, Curiosity project manager at JPL, said. “It was a transition problem. We can easily fix this now that we know what the issue is by clearing out the ready-to-send catalog before we switch to R11.”
[via SpaceFlightNow]
NASA‘s Goddard Conceptual Image Lab has released a video illustrating the way Mars might have looked 4 billion years ago, back when both Mars and Earth were young. It’s one of the most complex scientifically informed animations the studio has ever produced, NASA says, and it is breathtaking. The music is epic– like something you’d […]
It’s difficult to really wrap our minds around how massive the distances are in our solar system. A photograph from the NASA probe Cassini currently studying Saturn has been released that helps illustrate exactly how vast the distance from Saturn to the Earth is. If you’ve ever stepped outside on a clear night and looked […]
Just like Lt. Dan, Robonaut is set to get some new legs. NASA has announced that its robotic astronaut is currently aboard the ISS and will be getting a pair of robotic legs in 2014. When Robonaut was first sent to the ISS, the robot was only a torso with a pair of highly advanced […]
NASA announced in February of this year that assembly had completed on its MAVEN spacecraft that was set to travel to Mars. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin and the completion of its construction opened the door for the spacecraft to launch this month. The MAVEN mission is set to launch November 18. MAVEN […]
NASA’s Robonaut spacefaring robot has already taken over a fair few of the ISS crew members’ more menial tasks, and next year it’s going to get even more useful, as NASA kit the guy out with a pair of giant legs. Where was this guy when Sandra Bullock needed him?
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Robots certainly come in handy when it comes to helping us humans out in difficult situations, such as doing repetitive work without getting tired at all, ferrying heavy items from one point to another without breaking a sweat, and best of all, not complaining about long working hours as well as organizing a strike as a union. They are good workers, and it remains to be seen whether an apocalyptic vision will pan out when robots become self-aware and want to eliminate humans. NASA’s Robonaut assistant is touted to be on the receiving end of its most major upgrade to date, which would be a new pair of legs.
The long of it all is this (pun intended), the Robonaut would end up at a massive 8 feet in height, tipping the scales at 500 pounds. This mobilized machine will definitely be a whole lot larger compared to the rest of its human teammates, and there is a very good reason for its extra large set of limbs. According to astronaut Cady Coleman, the new pair of legs will enable the Robonaut to be able to climb swiftly through hatches on the International Space Station, where it would gain the stride of an “antelope” instead of taking smaller steps. First things first though, the improved automaton will need to know how to move before it’s ready so that it can help out us humans.
Robonaut To Get New Legs Early Next Year original content from Ubergizmo. 
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NASA has discovered a strange asteroid using the Hubble space telescope. The asteroid is called P/2013 P5 and NASA describes it as “weird and freakish.” What’s so odd about this asteroid is that it’s spewing six different streams of material into space. NASA discovered the asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter spewing […]
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